Foucault Punishment

Foucault in his work ‘Discipline and Punish’ (1977) offered a critical approach towards transformations of society. He observed the shift of power that control individuals from sovereign to disciplinary power and warned us not to be misled by the emergence of new systems as humane system of control. His critique of transformations was related to the birth of imprisonment (the new system of penalty).
For Foucault, in the old system of penalty, the body is tortured and pain was the central element of punishment. Torture is publicly exercised, everyone could see the power of the punisher and the control over the body lies in the hand of a single man. Torturing the body must be seen by all, and must be carried out in a spectacular manner and openly as a deterrence for crime. On the contrary, under the new system, the infliction of physical pain on the body is avoided however the body is “caught up in a system of constraints and privations, obligations and prohibitions” (1977, p.11). For Foucault, these are systems of surveillance which efficiently and effectively monitor the movement and actions of individuals. These systems do not punish less rather

Foucault perceived the punishing of the ‘body’ as well as the rehabilitation of the soul as a political activity. The body is trained and regulated by forms of habits making it docile towards the systems of surveillance. Here, Foucault and Bourdieu similarly talked about the body to be influenced, trained and regulated by forms of habits designated by structures. But, while Bourdieu referred to body hexis as elements of habitus (internalized and embodied), Foucault perceived the body to be constrained, trained and docile to habits that are external to the